First of all, we hold that the Bible, consisting of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, alone and the Bible in its entirety is the Word of God written and therefore inerrant in the autographs. We also submit, however, that the scientific method is a tried and effective methodology for coming to understand the nature of the physical world.

As Christians we believe that God created everything in the universe by and through Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:16; John 1:3). We freely admit that our belief has its basis in faith not on scientific data although confirmation of our faith lies in what we encounter in the natural world. We also acknowledge that through science, wherein hypotheses must be testable and verifiable, our knowledge of the physical world advances through systematic observation.

We hold that to be credible, any theory explaining the origin of modern human beings and the earth, even the universe itself, must be consistent with God's word and the findings and evidence of science. Anything less is bad theology, bad science, or both. We understand that we are rejecting creation scenarios based solely on hermeneutics and entrenched theological dogmas as well as evolutionary scenarios which solely explain life as a phenomenon independent of God. In this context, it appears to us that the strongest theoretical explanation of life in the present day world and the past life evidenced in the fossil record lies in a blend of historical and developmental creationism and evolutionary biology.

While we would not now attempt to state a unified theory we would argue the veracity of the following propositions as middle range theory:

1. Genesis 1:1 describes the creation of the universe. A time break of an unspecified duration, possibly billions of years, occurs between this original creation (Genesis 1:1) and the work God undertakes at Genesis 1:2-2:1.

   1. There are species on the earth, both flora and fauna, that have been continuously present for millions of years.

   2. The substance of the punctuated-equilibrium  model suggested by Niles Eldridge and Stephen J. Gould (Eldridge and Gould 1972; Gould and Eldridge 1977) is consistent with Genesis 1:1-2. The fossil record evidences a process wherein there were a series of long periods of stasis and short periods of extinction and speciation. Our world is the outcome of a process which took millions of years.

   3. Humanoids known as archaic Homo sapiens date from about 200,000 to 40,000 years ago (200-40 Kya).

   4. Humanoids, considered the first anatomically modern Homo sapiens populations, appeared about 40,000 years ago. These populations migrated globally adapting culturally and physically to the conditions they encountered in different regions (Scupin 2000:32).

2. God designed the processes we know as microevolution, which may be may be defined as a change in allele frequencies in a population over successive generations, to bring about genetic variation in populations including mutation, natural selection, gene flow, and genetic drift. These processes allow lifeforms to adapt to changing conditions in their environment. Not having this capacity would place a species at a high risk of extinction.

3. Humans and animals share a common genetic template.

   1. Modern human DNA is 98.2% the same as a chimpanzee and 97.8% the same as a gorilla.

   2. God used the molecule that provides the genetic code for biological structures known as DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and rewrote the anatomically modern Homo sapiens genetic code to produce the family of Adam and Eve about 6,000 years ago (6 Kya).

   3. Humanoids of prehistory, archaic Homo sapiens, existed with animal instinct of survival and not by higher refined intellect. Modern humans differ from these now extinct human-like lifeforms although we share a common chemistry.

   4. A "spirit in man" or human spirit distinguishes the family of Adam from other species in the genus Homo. They have a spiritual nature which separates them from other lifeforms. This is not the same as dualism where an immortal soul indwells the body. These spiritual capabilities result from the complex interactions of the many biochemical systems composing modern humans, in accord with the biblical view of mankind as a psychological unity.

4. The species Homo sapiens sapiens (modern man) is not animal. Reserved to modern humans are the emotional, intellectual, language, social, and spiritual abilities leading to civilization and culture.

   1. The Linnaean system of classification as utilized in biology and anthropology places modern humans in the animal kingdom as opposed to plants, fungi, nucleated single-celled organisms, and bacteria. Nevertheless, while modern humans and animals share many characteristics in common modern humans are not in actual fact animals. They are a biological lifeform, true enough, but exist on a plane distinct and apart from other organisms. Their place in nature is fleshly subject to death but they have the prospective of salvation and eternal life which nonhumans do not. It is problematic to place extinct human-like lifeforms (Homo erectus, Homo habilis, archaic Homo sapiens) into the same genus as modern humans for they were created by God separate and apart from them. 

      1. Humans possess an open biogram, an extremely flexible genetic program shaped by learning and allowing the capacity of free will. Animals possess instincts while humans do not.

      2. Humans have the unique capacity for culture. Animals do not.

      3. Only humans have the capacity for language and symbolic learning.

      4. Behaviors unique to modern humans, universal among post-Middle Paleolithic humans according to John J. Shay writing in Near Eastern Archaeology, include (Shea 2001:57):

         (a) the consistent use of symbols in material culture,

         (b) projectile weapon technology,

         (c) architectural modification of living spaces,

         (d) long-distance exchange networks, and

         (e) specialized hunting/gathering of seasonal food sources.

   2. Modern humans, the family of Adam and Eve, are different from their modern-looking humanoid predecessors, because God made them for his own special purpose which we understand in the theological concept of salvation.

   3. Modern humans exist as mortal, male and female, in the image of God, and endowed with mental and spiritual faculties not present in animals. They can reason while animals cannot. They have the capacity for culture, values, and character while animals do not.

5. Genesis 1:2�2:1 tells of God readying "The Land" (Eretz not the planet earth per se) for the family of Adam and Eve. The seven days of creation are not a discussion of the creation of the earth and its lifeforms, but rather of God's preparation of The Land (Eretz) for humans. Their position in Eden was to worship and obey God. God prepared the land for the residence of Adam and placed him in it. The Land in question is that which the Israelites understood to be the Promised Land lying from the Nile to the Tigris-Euphrates. 

6. The matching of wood samples from archaeological sites and living trees from locations all around the world and their cross-referencing resulted in the creation of a master chronology covering over 8,000 years in a continuous scale. There is no evidence of any global cataclysmic event in the tree-ring record. Life before and after 4,000 BCE remained relatively constant.

7. Salvation and eternal life is only available to modern human beings as the descendants of Adam and Eve.

   1. Death was present on the earth long before the creation of Adam.

   2. God gave Adam and his wife Eve a choice of life or death. They elected to disobey God and chose the way of death over life. Their sin, the transgression of God's command, removed their option for eternal life and as a result physical death came upon Adam and his descendants.

8. The remains of Neanderthals, a regional humanoid population of archaic Homo sapiens, are found throughout Europe and the Western Asia. They date from roughly 35-150 Kya, 35,000 to 150,000 years ago  (Relethford 2000:361). Early modern humans and archaic Homo sapiens appear to have been contemporaries. There is some evidence, limited as it may be, of some overlap in dates (Relethford 2000:380; Wolpoff 1999:755-761), possibly different species as there is significant genetic difference (Krings et al. 1997; Relethford 1998), competing with each other for the same niche in West Eurasian environments (Shea 2001:38). Milford Wolpoff holds that across Europe the bones of modern H. sapiens are later than the Neanderthals and the gap between the two is greater in the west than than in the east (Wolpoff 1999:781). In form all fossil humans since 35 Kya are anatomically modern Homo sapiens (Relethford 2000:370).

9. Genetic research of modern H. sapiens populations evidence a bottleneck in the ancestral human population within the span of the Middle Paleolithic (45-250 Kya) numbering less than 10,000 breeding females (Shea 2001:57; Ambrose 1998; Harpending et al. 1993)

The Genesis Flood was likely a regional and a Near Eastern event.

1. Millions of species, flora and fauna, have their own ecological niches. Many distinct life forms exist exclusively in Australia and New Zealand. Others are native to the Americas.

The "ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat" (Genesis 8:4 NASB) in Early Bronze IV (sometimes referred to as EB IVa-EB IVb where the former is their old world and the latter their strange new world somewhere in 2000-2200 BCE).

1. Michael Grant, in his work The Rise of the Greeks, states "during the third millennium BC there were people in Greece who did not speak Greek, or any language related to it" (Grant 1987:1).  After citing an echo of their language he goes on to say "but in about 2000-1900 BC - at the beginning of what archaeologists call the middle Hellenic or middle Bronze Age - invaders, speaking a version of what later became Greek, came in from the north, and devastated most of the previous habitation centers" (Grant 1987:1).

2. In Amihai Mazar's Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000-586 B.C.E. he devotes chapter 5 called "An Interlude The EB IV/MB I Period (2300/2250-2000 B.C.E.)" to a roughly 300 year period where:

   ...Palestine was sparsely populated, mainly by pastoralists and village dwellers. This period of decline parallels the First Intermediate Period in Egypt (Dynasties VII-XII, during which there was a decentralization of power and a break in the traditional connections between Egypt and Asia, particularly with Byblos. (Mazar 1990:151.)

P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., writing in the BAR's Ancient Israel: A Short History from Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple says:

It now seems unlikely that an invasion or immigration of nomads was a primary factor in the collapse of urban civilization in the last part of the third millennium. The pastoral peoples so prominent in this period were present in earlier times as well, living alongside the established urban centers. Overpopulation, drought, famine or a combination of such problems may have exhausted the resources necessary to the maintenance of an urban way of life. When the cities disappeared, the nomadic encampments remained (McCarter 1988:9.)

Page last edited: 01/25/06 04:53 PM

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